The Limits of Import-substitution and the Origins of Taiwan's Developmental State, 1950-1958.
In 1955, only five years into KMT rule on Taiwan, the growth of manufacturing output stalled. The government recommended that firms looked to overseas markets and promised to assist in that effort. The national currency was devalued, tariffs were adjusted, and the cost of exporting was cheapened. In 1959 Taiwan embarked on what has since been labeled export-oriented growth. The goal of this UROP is to study how the capacity of the state responded to the recession of 1955-1956 by analyzing the policy debates regarding a solution to the recession. This project examined a 1957-1958 Chinese language archival document that was produced by the Taiwan Economic Stabilization Board and was gathered from the Institute of Modern History. And this project compared the document with an article written by Wan-Wen Chu, a leading scholar of post-war Taiwan economic development. The presentation demonstrates how this internal state document was placed into the historical context and how the state compensated and adjusted to the economic recession.